I have a Kdenlive project with about 5 video tracks. On the topmost track, Video 1, I have a copyright notice that I want to be always present throughout the whole video. It's just a PNG image with alpha transparency, and it contains some text in the bottom right corner.

The problem is that it seems that in the Composite dialog, I have to specify which track it combines with. This means that if that track has nothing in it, or if one of the other tracks is what is showing, then the topmost copyright image disappears. In some cases, the topmost image turns pure white and blocks out all other images. If I select "Auto" it always combines with the second video track, Video 2, so that doesn't help.

It's kind of hard to describe how it doesn't work, so maybe it's easier to describe what I want:

I want the PNG transparency to simply be transparent no matter what, regardless of which track below contains or doesn't contain video. That way I can have my copyright notice render throughout the whole video. Is that not possible?

When you complete your project save it as a Kdenlive project. Click New button to open new Kdenlive session and then open project file in the project tree. Drag it into the timeline and you will see that all videos have merged into a single track. Now you can add your .png with Composite and it should work the way you want it to.

Yes, it's doable without having to resort to two separate projects. You can easily do it in your project, as I will explain below. I know since I'm doing a small logo overlay for all my projects, for instance, see http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=LyO7VXgX25g

My project is set up as follows:
1. create a title clip in which you place your logo, copyright information, et cetera, as you need.
2. drag this title clip on the topmost video track in the timeline.
3. add a composite transition to this clip in the timeline. Set the opacity as required. And now for the trick: compose with the bottommost track in your project and simply leave that empty. This way you ensure that the clip will be composed with the result of the other tracks. At least that is my limited understanding...
4. drag the right clip end as required to set its length.
5. add the other clips to the other tracks, compose them, et cetera.

That's it!

Thanks for the suggestions.

Unfortunately, in my project, composting with an empty track on the bottom doesn't work entirely as hoped.

As instructed I have the title clip in the topmost track, and I have the bottommost video track, track #7, empty. I've composited track 1 with track 7.

The result is that the title clip seems to composite only with whatever is in tracks 5 and 6. Whenever there is something in tracks 2, 3, or 4, then the title clip disappears.

Looks like I will have to render with two projects as suggested.